Wicked Lester

Wicked Lester was the name of a company founded in 1971 American music group from New York City, from 1973, the successful hard rock band Kiss emerged. Wicked Lester in 1972 produced one of Ron Johnson record for Epic Records, which was never published, but found as a bootleg circulation among collectors. Two of the songs were recorded by Wicked Lester 1975 used by Kiss for their album Dressed to Kill.

Band History

Wicked Lester emerged from the band Rainbow, who was Paul Stanley. The guitarist from Rainbow, Matt Rael, left the group and was replaced by Stephen Coronel, who in turn tried his acquaintance, bassist Gene Simmons, to bring to the band. A first meeting in the apartment colonel showed quickly that Stanley and Simmons were not on the same wavelength, but these initial problems were overcome and Simmons joined the band, which included at that time Tony Zarella (drums) and Brooke Ostrander (keyboards).

Rainbow tried also with self- written material to find a musical identity and also discussed their image. Therefore, the band rehearsed a lot, but after just one appearance, the group named Wicked Lester in order.

The name change should support the change of style the band. Wicked Lester began writing his own songs, because Stanley and Simmons had no more interest, mainly playing cover versions of other titles. Paul Stanley got in touch with Ron Johnson, who worked at Electric Lady Studios, and he was interested in producing the band, leaving the band studio time when there were pauses between shots paying artists.

When it became clear that Wicked Lester's material was strong enough to seek a record deal, Stephen Coronel had to leave the band. This was firstly due to the fact that Epic his appearance and looks found inappropriate, for others it was due to a simmering dispute between him and Paul Stanley. Coronel had no understanding for the confident Stanley, who seemed to know exactly what and who he wanted to be.

In the fall of 1971 Coronel was replaced by Ron Leejack. Leejack was a session musician and had already finished with the band Cactus studio recordings and live performances. At this point, Wicked Lester had completed about half of the initiated recordings that were completed by July 1972.

The material for the album consisted of parts of cover versions and original titles. However, it was the first group is not to win a record company for himself, and Stanley and Simmons investigated the reasons for this in their fellow musicians. Finally they succeeded then but to get a record contract: In an audition, the band played for the A & R Assistant at Epic Records, Tom Werman. During this audition were moving all the musicians of the band on stage, with the exception of Leejack, who preferred to play sitting down, because he was convinced that we can play better.

The album was not initially released, and Simmons and Stanley were not satisfied with the result. Simmons said in an interview with the fanzine Kiss Kollector: "When we listened to our album, we realized that this, although we liked what we were doing, which was not what we wanted. This music was not us. "

The group rehearsed further still before Zarella and Ostrander were fired. Ron Leejack announced shortly, thereafter Epic Records announced the record deal.

Stanley and Simmons continued their work, but decided to follow a new path musically. For this they needed a drummer and read the relevant journals. In the issue of Rolling Stone magazine dated 31 August 1972, she found an ad from Peter Criss with the text: EXPD. ROCK & roll drummer looking for orig. grp. doing soft & hard music. Peter and invited him to a job interview.

In the late autumn of 1972 Stanley and Simmons wanted to find out if Epic would have interest to work in spite of the conceptual and musical changes with Wicked Lester. They invited Epic boss Don Ellis one, to see a concert of the group, and offered two dates, namely 20 and 28 November 1972. Ellis actually appeared, but he soon took to flight, as Paul Stanley on the song Firehouse suddenly grabbed a bucket and its contents poured into Ellis direction. However, the bucket contained confetti, but Ellis was not thrilled and went. The band never heard from him again.

Wicked Lester contributed to this performance already white make -up and performed as a trio. Stanley and Simmons advertised in the newspaper the Village Voice, and sought in this way for a new lead guitarist. Among the candidates who acted out for the job, included, among others John French, who in 1973 founded the band Twisted Sister, and Bob Kulick, the older brother of guitarist Bruce Kulick Kiss later. Kulick was particularly good with Paul Stanley and had also musically shown to be well suited. After Kulicks Casting Ace Frehley played before; First, the band played with him some pieces of Led Zeppelin, then own material, including Deuce and Firehouse. Two weeks later, Frehley was invited back, again played with the band and learned shortly afterwards that he was selected as the lead guitarist for Wicked Lester.

In January 1973, the group renamed itself to Kiss, and Wicked Lester was history.

Album

Link to image ( Please note copyrights )

The recorded between November 1971 and July 1972 album contained a mixture of self-written title and cover versions that showed the versatile style Wicked Lester between rock, folk and pop. Two of the tracks were later recorded and released in other versions of Kiss.

The chorus of the cover version " We Wanna Shout It Out Loud" ( The Hollies ) as an incentive to Shout it out Loud from the 1976 Kiss album Destroyer, although both titles have nothing in common. Love Her All I Can and She appeared on the Kiss album Dressed to Kill again. Love Her All I Can was the original version is very similar, while She no longer contained the flute and the congas of the original version.

1976, when Kiss swam with Destroyer on the wave of success, made ​​CBS Records, who held the rights to the recordings, to a remix of the Wicked Lester album to capitalize on the popularity of Kiss and to release the album at the end of the year. This was followed by the purchase of the master tapes by Kiss' record company, Casablanca Records, prevented; the rights were each divided equally between Kiss and Casablanca.

The cover, which was intended for publication, was later used by CBS Records for the debut album of the group The Laughing Dogs.